A Very Busy Several Days

First, I want to start off with a big THANK YOU to Melissa at the Blogroll for adding me. I'm still trying to figure all this out and I can't even tell you how long it took me to get the link to the Stirrup Queen's to post on my blog. Whew!

Second, thank you to those of you who have left me comments in the past couple of days. I will figure out how to respond to you and will do my best to keep up on everything.

Third, doesn't it figure that as soon as I go out of town everything starts happening at lightning speed? I'm going to fill you in on the TTC stuff first and then if you are so inclined to get a glimpse into my hectic few days you can continue to read on...

I had my first follie check and blood draw on Wednesday and then we were heading out. I had 4 follies, 2 on each side measuring 12, 12, 10, 10. I was assured that I could skip a day of monitoring and come in on Saturday. I got a call from my nurse Wednesday afternoon just after lunch. My estrogen was a little high at 303 and Dr. M wanted me to come back TOMORROW and reduce my gonal-f to 225 only in the morning, nothing at night. I called her right back to say that it wasn't possible for me to come back as I was 4 hours away. She checked with Dr. M and they agreed that I could just do the reduced gonal-f and keep the menopur the same (150 at night) and come back Saturday morning. Needless to say I was on pins and needles and questioning my decision making. I would say things to myself like "what's wrong with you? of course you need to go back!" "no wonder you can't get pg, you are too selfish and are going against the doctors!" It was not a good time to be inside my head. Mind you, I was only stimming for 4 days at this point so things couldn't have gotten that out of hand, right?

Saturday morning I went in for my check. I had follies measuring 18, 16, 15, 15, and 14 (I think) and my estrogen jumped up to 905. I was given instructions to take my ganirelix and increase my menopur to 225 and come back in the morning. The extra menopur is supposed to keep my estrogen in check while the ganirelix is to hold off the 18 from getting too mature too fast. The u/s tech asked me if I always go this fast...I was only on CD8 for crying out loud. I told her that I'm an early ovulator and that I responded very well to Clomid and triggered a day earlier than anticipated so I wasn't really surprised by this. I went back yesterday morning and my follies had now grown to 22.7, 18.5, 21.6, 19.5 and 16.8. Holy cow! I have super growing follies in there that don't want to wait! I was given trigger instructions and I asked the nurse to draw a "target" on my backside to help BJ with his task of administering the HCG shot.

I got the call yesterday afternoon that my e2 level was 1001 so it is GO time! I had to get the trigger shot at 12:15am and my egg retrieval is set for Tuesday at 12:15pm. I was told to arrive by 10:45 with sample in hand. They told me to take a last "boost" of my menopur and ganirelix and I'm guessing that was to help my smaller follie mature even more. My head was spinning...we actually are going to get this done...a real chance at a baby. Then the panic of the shot took over. BJ and I watched the video online and he still wasn't convinced he could do it. We intended on going to bed and setting the alarm so we could get a little sleep. No such luck. It's like when you're a kid and you KNOW you have a big test the next day and you stay up late to make the morning stay away. It's crazy, I know but what can I say, that needle is really long. So we stayed up and watched TV. I say "watched" because I'm not sure we "heard" any of it. The time came for the mixing and BJ was in the bathroom with me while I mixed it and we went over everything again. I laid down on the bed and told him to let me know when it was coming. I barely felt a thing. The needle is long but thin and the solution didn't burn at all. It went without a hitch. I gave BJ a big kiss and I think he was pretty proud of himself. And I must say, I was very proud of him.

Of course we couldn't sleep after that. I think our adrenaline was pumping so much that we needed a lot of time to "come down" from the high. I had a slight headache when we went to bed and woke up to a full blown throbbing pain after about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. I called the clinic to ask if I could take some Tylenol to ease the pain and was told that it was ok. So now my head feels better which is always a good thing. The next thing to stress about is fertilization. We've never had a problem with BJ's swimmers so I'm sure they will be fine. I think our problem is that I have rotten eggs. I hope my eggs can be seduced by his swimmers tomorrow. I'll even light a candle and put some music on if it will help. I will try to update tomorrow afternoon but I'm not sure how together I will be. I'm pretty sensitive to anesthesia so don't hold your breath. :-)

As for all the other happenings I think I will write later as I really need to get some work done. Stay tuned and thanks for following along.